


The Wandering God

by manic_intent



Category: Black Panther (2018), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Spoilers, That AU where Erik's background is different
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 08:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “I am called Heimdall,” Heimdall said, looking straight at T’Challa. “And I bring greetings from Thor, King of Asgard. Well met, your Highness.”“You speak Xhosa,” T’Challa said, surprised.





	The Wandering God

**Author's Note:**

> There’s no reason for this pairing other than the fact that Michael B. Jordan and Idris Elba are really handsome. And I guess even though I love Idris and was willing to watch Mountain Between Us just for him, I don’t think I’ve actually written any fic for him. Came close with Dark Tower, but in the end the amount of defensive research I felt I had to do just to write in that fandom felt like too much effort. 
> 
> s
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> One thing I liked about Black Panther is how ??_?? everyone was to the reason behind the main driving conflict behind Killmonger. T'Chaka pretty much abandoned his then-innocent child nephew for no real reason? Wha? This is a fic where that never happened, which I hope will also be a common fix it theme for this fandom. Since Erik never had to become Erik in this fic, he doesn’t use his American name.

The stranger on the gold-maned horse waited patiently as N’Jadaka and T’Challa stopped at a respectful distance, warriors from the Border Tribe fanned watchfully behind them in blue-patterned vibranium capes. He gave them a grave, unsettlingly unfocused stare with his golden eyes that made W’Kabi tense. The horse flicked its ears forward, then back. 

“I am called Heimdall,” Heimdall said, looking straight at T’Challa. “And I bring greetings from Thor, King of Asgard. Well met, your Highness.” 

“You speak Xhosa,” T’Challa said, surprised.

Heimdall smiled. “He spoke English,” N’Jadaka began, then he frowned, and looked over at W’Kabi, who stared warily at Heimdall. 

“He spoke neither,” T’Challa corrected himself. “Asgardian technology?” 

“We call it Allspeak. You will hear the language you need to hear.” Heimdall dismounted, patting the golden-maned horse on its flank. It swept them with an uncomfortably intelligent stare, snorting loudly, and stood with its feet planted smartly, not even bothering to swat gathering flies with its tail. 

“This guy has a Wikipedia entry,” Shuri said into N’Jadaka’s earpiece. At T’Challa’s slight frown, N’Jadaka guessed it was for both their benefit. “He’s some bridge guard guy. Has a golden-maned horse called Gulltoppr. What a weird name. Maybe it’s a spelling error? Gull-topper?” 

“Gulltoppr,” Heimdall said, though the word had alien consonants, jangled by Allspeak into a rough approximation. 

How had Heimdall…? “You have good ears,” N’Jadaka said, not bothering to hide his wariness. 

“A gift and a curse.” Heimdall was tall, broad-shouldered, with long, muscular arms, his hair in thick dreads that brushed his shoulders. He was beautiful the way the great ukhozi were beautiful, poised and formidable like the raptor birds, golden-eyed, far-sighted. He wore a long blade over his back, sheathed in leather. A warrior.

“What does the King of Asgard want?” T’Challa asked politely. “He did not speak with me at the last UN summit.” An emergency meeting had been convened when Thor had arrived in a vast starship packed with refugees from across the universe. They had been given leave to rebuild on an island that Tony Stark had purchased, but their welcome was curt in a world indifferent to the suffering of the invisible. 

“There were too many ears at the summit.” Heimdall said. “We—”

“What does anyone want from us but vibranium?” N’Jadaka said, curling his lip. The endless back and forth of what T’Challa called ‘soft diplomacy’ bored him quickly. T’Challa shot him a reproachful stare, and N’Jadaka raised his eyebrows, refusing to back down. 

“And you are right. It is vibranium we seek. We would like to trade. What you call ‘vibranium’ we call star-metal, which we also used, in a codified form, to power our cities.”

“What does he mean by a codified form?” Shuri asked, her curiosity palpable. 

“We are willing to share our technology,” Heimdall said, perhaps by way of an answer. “You Wakandans have shut yourself from the world, but with our help, there is no need to shut yourself from the stars as well. If that is your desire.”

“We don’t have much vibranium to spare,” T’Challa said, with a wry smile that looked practiced only to N’Jadaka. “I’m not sure what you have heard about Wakanda, my friend, but we are not wealthy in our riches.”

Heimdall looked over their shoulders, then back at T’Challa, his patience unbroken. “I know you have cause to hide. And we will keep your secrets. You have a great city behind the forest, and a funnel cored down to the heart of an old star. And you have another township in the mountains—”

“You’re a spy.” N’Jadaka had enough. He started forward, only for T’Challa to catch his elbow. 

“What does Asgard have to trade? Your people are refugees. We have no use for starships. We value our ways.” 

Heimdall inclined his head. “So it may be. There is a second thing we will trade. I am far-seeing. Few secrets in the universe are safe from me, let alone anything on a single planet. Use that as you wish.” 

“If you are here,” T’Challa said, “then who watches what is left of Asgard?”

“Our need for star-metal is greater than our need for a gatekeeper.” Heimdall looked untroubled. 

“So you can see anything in the world, any world,” W’Kabi said, openly skeptical. Heimdall inclined his head. “There is a man called Klaue. He killed my father. Where is he?” 

“Do you have his image?” Heimdall asked, and looked keenly at the hologram W’Kabi summoned over his wrist feed. His unfocused golden eyes swept the browned plain with an ukhozi’s abstraction. “There is a bunker within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The man you seek looks unwell. Unrefined star-metal is not meant to be worn for years against the skin.” Heimdall touched his left arm, trailing fingers up against his elbow. “He is planning a raid on a museum in London.” 

“It’ll take time to confirm this,” T’Challa said, with a quick warning stare at W’Kabi, whose jaw had tightened. 

“I will wait.” 

Heimdall was grudgingly allowed into the border town, his horse led away to be stabled. He was unnaturally incurious. Instead of looking around as he was led past the rhinoceros pens, Heimdall kept his eyes straight ahead, staring at nothing. On a passing glance, N’Jadaka would have thought him blind. 

“Good with that sword on your back?” N’Jadaka asked, as W’Kabi invited them into one of the larger, conical stone houses. Unlike much of the rest of Wakanda, the Border Tribes maintained functional villages, ones that were actually lived in. All for the illusion. 

“Better than most,” Heimdall said, and sat where he was told, his feet pressed to the ground. 

“You should try me,” N’Jadaka said, with a sharp grin, and ignored T’Challa’s sigh. 

“It would be a short fight,” Heimdall said, with a quiet confidence that made N’Jadaka scowl and Shuri giggle. 

“You’re going to fight him? Are you? _Ooh_ I want to watch. Can you wait until I get there?” 

“No one is fighting anyone,” T’Challa said firmly.

“Spoilsport,” Shuri muttered. Despite his irritation, N’Jadaka fought his grin. 

“Maybe later,” he murmured. 

“Yes! You’re my favourite brother.” 

T’Challa sniffed, settling onto a bench and turning to Heimdall. “How is New Asgard coming along?”

#

N’Jadaka found Heimdall in Shuri’s lab, stripped to his breeches, seated on the bench under the ArcSCAN, hands folded in his lap. Heimdall didn’t acknowledge his presence, his eyes fixed on the wall as Shuri sped between consoles, vibrating with excitement.

“This is _so_ much better than the broken white guy in the ‘fridge,” Shuri said enthusiastically, flicking her fingers over her wrist. A mirrored holoscreen jumped over N’Jadaka’s, dense with statistics. “Look at that! Bioengineering at a cellular level that I didn’t think was possible. They’ve somehow replicated several of the core effects of the Heart Shaped Herb. But with _vibranium_.” 

“Dust to dust,” Heimdall said, without looking up. 

Not. Creepy at all. N’Jadaka stared hard at Heimdall, trying to convey through his eyeballing that T’Challa might have decreed Heimdall an honoured guest, but if Heimdall—or anyone—even bent so much as a hair on Shuri’s head, someone was going to die. 

“We’re going after Klaue,” N’Jadaka told Shuri. “He slipped the War Dogs.” 

Shuri perked up. “We?” 

“Not you.” 

Shuri threw up her hands. “Augh! You were going out on missions when you were my age. T’Challa too. This is _colonialist_ nonsense.” 

“And how are your classes going with Okoye?” N’Jadaka asked mildly. 

Shuri glowered at him. “What if I make a fuck-off flying suit like the Americans?” 

“Language,” N’Jadaka said, and beamed as Shuri bared her teeth at him and hustled off to get something from the armoury. 

Heimdall didn’t even seem like he’d heard the exchange at all, and though he did glance up when N’Jadaka walked closer, his eyes were unfocused over a point above N’Jadaka’s shoulder. He said nothing as N’Jadaka walked around the bench, studying unmarked skin. “You people really put vibranium in your blood?” N’Jadaka asked. 

“A rarefied genestitch.” 

“Can you teach that to us?” 

“If you like.” 

“You’re quick to make decisions on behalf of your King,” N’Jadaka said, a little enviously. He was a Prince in his own right, but T’Challa didn’t give him that much power. Or Shuri.

“’King’ is a poor approximation for what Thor and his line mean to the Asgardian people.” 

“Your God, then,” N’Jadaka said, folding his arms and leaning against the ArcSCAN. “Though I hear you are one yourself. You are the Warder of Heaven.” 

“The stories your people tell about mine are cut through an imperfect lens.”

“Not _my_ people.” 

Heimdall’s mouth curled into a wry smile. “Princess Shuri said ‘wikipedia’ told her that I am fated to kill Loki during Ragnarok. That sounds like a story to me. From one of your blood.” 

“The poem Þrymskviða also calls him hvítastr ása, the ‘whitest of the gods’,” Shuri yelled, muffled, from a level below. “Isn’t that funny? Wikipedia is the _best_.” 

“That is not the right translation,” Heimdall said calmly. He turned his face away. He did not look like a God, save for the strangeness of his eyes. He looked like a man, albeit an imposing one, quiet and dignified. Perhaps that was the point. 

“So what else can you do? Can you see the future, far-seer?” N’Jadaka had intended sarcasm, but managed only curiosity.

“No. But I have watched all the worlds for millennia. Some things run in predictable cycles.” Heimdall closed his eyes. “You are a Prince. Born to another Prince, disgraced and killed for his disgrace. You are haunted by it, for all that you were brought to Wakanda to live in his place. Without the room to grieve, resentment can only fester.” 

N’Jadaka clenched his fists tightly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Sometimes I wish I did not.” Heimdall glanced straight at him, and his direct stare made N’Jadaka’s skin crawl. Despite himself, N’Jadaka could not hold his eyes, averting his own stare with a bitten-off curse. “You love your cousins and have always loved them,” Heimdall said, after a moment’s pause. “Try to remember that instead of your hate.” 

Shuri met him by the exit to her lab, white-lipped. Of course. She’d been listening in. N’Jadaka listened to her brisk description of her new gadgets on autopilot, and as he packed up the case and T’Challa’s new necklace to go, she caught him by the elbow. “You are my brother.”

N’Jadaka patted her wrist. “Your favourite brother,” he said, though their usual joke felt flat, with the god so close. Shuri stared unhappily at him, letting go only when he tugged his arm away gently. 

Afterwards, as they took the airship north, T’Challa sat with him by the hull, visibly uncomfortable. “Shuri talked to me.” 

“I thought she would.” N’Jadaka looked pointedly over T’Challa’s shoulder, at where Okoye sat cross-legged at the ship’s controls. 

“I think of you as a brother as well,” T’Challa said, ignoring the glance. “Shuri and I love you dearly. What our fathers did cannot be undone. But I am not my father. And you are not yours.” 

“The two of you worry too much,” N’Jadaka said, as flippantly as he could, though it was hard to look at T’Challa now with Heimdall’s words still echoing in his ears. T’Challa with his necklace that held the Black Panther armour. T’Challa, who had eaten the Heart-Shaped Herb, something that neither N’Jadaka nor Shuri would ever taste. T’Challa who, like T’Chaka before him, still divided the world between a clean line drawn been ‘us’ and ‘them’. 

“What do you think of our guest?” T’Challa asked. 

“I think I would still like to have that fight,” N’Jadaka said, and grinned as T’Challa sniffed. 

“He is a warrior millennias-old, if you would believe the intel on the Asgardians,” Okoye said from the cockpit. “Even if he wasn’t enhanced by bioengineering, it would be a hard fight.” 

“I live for hard fights.” N’Jadaka smirked at T’Challa. “If I’d challenged you for your throne I would be King. Though… M’Baku came closer than I thought to kicking your ass. Seriously, I hate that guy.”

“He’s an honourable man,” T’Challa said, with a carefully straight face. 

“Oh, so that’s why you’ve begun ‘diplomatic visits’ to the Jabari? How’s that going, by the way? When’s the wedding?” 

“And if you had wanted the throne, you or Shuri, I would have conceded,” T’Challa said, ignoring the jibe. 

“I did see you visibly panic when she put up her hand,” N’Jadaka said. It had been funnier before. Now… would he have wanted to be King? He wasn’t sure now. He had been, before. The throne had always been meant for T’Challa, and N’Jadaka had always accepted that as fact, a certainty as true as the rising of the sun. _It is hard for a good man to be king_ , T’Chaka had told T’Challa, on the ancestral plane. N’Jadaka had shrugged. Better for a good man to be a bad king, than for a bad man to rise to the throne.

And yet. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ were often just stories that people told about each other. 

“Klaue will be a dangerous fight,” Okoye warned. “Sort your heads out before we get there.” 

“You worry too much, Okoye. I’m always good for a fight.” N’Jadaka said, slouching against the humming hull of the airship. 

She shook her head. “That’s what worries me.”

#

It was not a short fight. Afterwards, as N’Jadaka picked himself off the ground, bruised and annoyed, he said, “I could’ve won.”

Heimdall inclined his head. He wasn’t even sweating. Could Asgardians sweat? “You’re good.” It wasn’t said condescendingly, but N’Jadaka bristled anyway. 

“I could’ve won if I’d had the Herb.” He regretted saying that moment he closed his mouth. Behind Heimdall, T’Challa froze mid-stride, and in the corner of his eyes, Shuri’s grin faded. The Dora Milaje, watching in a circle, were impassive, but W’Kabi looked keenly between T’Challa and N’Jadaka and said nothing. He’d been calmer since Klaue had been brought to justice. 

“Not likely,” Heimdall said. He sheathed his sword with no visible effort, and he looked indifferent to his shallow wounds. They were on the launchpad courtyard on the eastern topside of the laboratory, and the sun was starting to set, lancing the clouds with shards of gold and silver. Normally, watching the Wakandan sunset calmed N’Jadaka. Today, he scowled. 

“My turn,” Okoye said, and N’Jadaka was annoyed at the interruption, then a little ashamed. Okoye had no interest in fighting Heimdall. She had said what she had to give N’Jadaka space to withdraw, without losing his temper. He nodded at her as he stepped aside, and Heimdall watched Okoye calmly as she drew her spear. 

“You would’ve won with the Herb,” Shuri said loyally, as N’Jadaka sat on the bench, taking gulps of water from an offered tumbler. 

“Don’t,” N’Jadaka told her, as T’Challa sat down on his other flank. 

Okoye was holding her ground, at least. She was faster than Heimdall, and as they watched, she sidestepped a swing, her spear spinning in a fluid loop over her shoulders, drawing a red gash up Heimdall’s thigh. “You softened him up, at least,” W’Kabi said.

N’Jadaka snorted. “Nothing to do with me, that’s all Okoye. Look closely. He’s not tired at all. Or in pain.” 

“You know,” Shuri complained, as Heimdall swung his blade in tight arcs, forcing Okoye back, “I’m really disappointed.” 

“In what?” N’Jadaka asked. 

“This. All this. I’ve always imagined what a First Contact situation in Wakanda would be. With _aliens_ ,” she said impatiently, as both T’Challa and N’Jadaka stared at her blankly. “You know, science fiction! Like Octavia Butler’s Dawn.” 

“Isn’t Xenogenesis an allegory of slavery?” T’Challa pulled a face.

“ _Tentacle_ aliens,” Shuri shot back, because his cousins lived on completely separate mental wavelengths at the best of times.

“So you’d rather Heimdall over there was a tentacle alien?” N’Jadaka asked dryly.

“Maaaybe. I mean, look at him. He looks human. That’s so… so _boring_. Same number of toes, even. _Toes_. And I think there’s a reason for it too, not that he was willing to tell me.”

“He’s not human at all,” N’Jadaka said, as Heimdall took a blow to a stomach from Okoye with barely a grunt, one that would have given even T’Challa pause. 

“They are _so_ human. Didn’t you hear Thor’s UN speech? Like seriously? Their white royal fam used to conquer other worlds. Stole stuff and built a giant fuck-off golden city with all their new wealth.” 

“Language,” N’Jadaka and T’Challa said together. Shuri stuck her tongue out at them. 

“Shuri has a point,” W’Kabi said. T’Challa sighed. “What? She does.”

“Thank you W’Kabi. You’re my new favourite brother. Anyway. Their DNA isn’t human. But in the scale of what they are so far? They’re just like us. So I’m _really_ not sure about this vibranium trade agreement.” Shuri gestured in the direction of her lab.

“You said you liked Heimdall,” T’Challa said. 

“I do. I think we should keep him, he’s awesome. But the tech they have is way beyond ours. There’s some parts of it that I can’t even begin to understand, which, I can tell you, is both amazing and depressing. Any sufficiently advanced tech and magic, right?”

“And?” N’Jadaka asked. 

“Apparently they lost their whole planet. Don’t you think it’s weird that they came straight here?” At N’Jadaka’s frown and T’Challa’s blank stare, Shuri set her jaw. “Oh, come on. Surely you’ve both seen it. This is New World stuff all over again. Except _all_ of Earth is the new world. It’s going to be all Independence Day out there and Will Smith is still alive.” 

“Sometimes I don’t understand what you’re saying, even though we’re speaking the same language,” T’Challa said, after a long pause. “Is that what Mother likes to call our generation gap?”

N’Jadaka rolled his eyes. “So what, we kick him out? Tell Thor the deal’s off? Couldn’t you have said something earlier?”

“Nah. Why? We missed out on the last alien invasion. This one is going to be _amazing_. Our very own War of the Worlds.” Shuri said, her face bright with glee. 

“I don’t understand you either,” N’Jadaka muttered. Over at the far end of the courtyard, Heimdall deflected a blow with a deft turn of his blade, twisting away.

#

Heimdall loped up to N’Jadaka where he sat on the wide ledge, the waterfall hurtling down to their right, the air thick with moisture and mist. “You shouldn’t be aware of those tunnels,” N’Jadaka said, as Heimdall settled down beside him.

“A gift and a curse.” 

“Is it a curse to know everything there is to know?” 

“To know everything is to stand apart from everything,” Heimdall said, solemn. He was visibly unarmed, and someone, possibly Ramonda, had re-dressed Heimdall in Wakandan styles. The sleek jacket was sleeved in lines of silver, tracing stark peacock eyes up to Heimdall’s elbows. But for his eyes, he would have passed as Wakandan on a glance.

“I come here to be alone,” N’Jadaka told him. Heimdall nodded. Of course he knew. “How long have you been watching Wakanda?” 

“It took us months to reach Earth from the Sol Gate, and I spent it watching your world.” 

“You can’t have known what you did about my father in the last few months.” 

“Midgard is a world that carries our geneseed. It was my task to watch the development of such worlds,” Heimdall said, after a pause. 

“And how did we go? As above, so below?” 

Heimdall shrugged. “The Asgardian geneseed is flawed. That’s what we now believe. Midgard was the last planet we sowed.” 

“What’s it like? To live forever?” N’Jadaka tried to imagine what it was like to be older than worlds. Older than the stars. 

“I can’t describe it to you. No more than you can describe to me what it means to be mortal.” 

“That’s what you think.” N’Jadaka lay on his back on the stone, folding his hands under his head. “Most of us have short lives that we waste on doing nothing. Look at this place. Beautiful city. Happy people. Happily blind to all our brothers and sisters out there who need us. No wonder we’ve got people who can no longer bear to live here.” N’Jadaka still got letters now and then from Nakia, embedded somewhere in war-riven lands that often weaponised rape and ground children into monsters. 

“So why do you stay?” 

“Because if I go I won’t come back. Or I’ll be different. And I don’t want that yet. I think.” A future where the hate he had to give was greater than the love he had for his family was close by. It had always been close by. “My father was right.” 

“Right and wrong is a matter of consequences.”

“Not opinion?” 

Heimdall smiled, a thin, mirthless smile. “Opinions change.” 

“Why are you still here?” N’Jadaka asked. The final trade agreement between Wakanda and Asgard had been one of an exchange of resources for technology. Shuri and her assistants were over the moon. They’d just spent a week shut in the lab, to Ramonda’s consternation, concocting the Gods knew what.

“I am a watcher of worlds. All lands are the same to me. Civilisations rise and fall and eat each other. As above, so below.” Heimdall lay down beside him, at arm’s length, his palms folded over his chest. “Sometimes, a single civilisation will rise, one with potential.” 

“To be like Asgard?” N’Jadaka scowled.

“No. No, to be better than us. It happens, now and then. Xandar. R’llyium. Korm. And perhaps now Earth. The first civilisation to truly touch the stars often becomes the cradle society for that world.” Heimdall turned his face to meet N’Jadaka’s stare. “Thor hopes that your King will reconsider his position on starship technology.” 

“Wakanda isn’t perfect.” 

“Perfection is a contradiction,” Heimdall said, and didn’t even blink as N’Jadaka growled and shifted over, straddling Heimdall’s hips. Golden eyes flicked up from N’Jadaka’s belly to his face, then back down. 

“You should drink the Unmaking. Fight me without your powers.” 

“If you like,” Heimdall said, though Shuri had been the one who had intervened when N’Jadaka had first suggested it, saying she couldn’t be sure if Heimdall would survive it. His hands rested lightly over N’Jadaka’s hips, stroking him over the stiff fabric of his jacket. 

“Why _are_ you here, Warder of Heaven?” N’Jadaka asked, smirking, this time, and Heimdall snorted, reaching up, finally, finally, hauling him down. Heimdall was a bad kisser. The unbroken calm he wore flattened away any hunger, keeping his touch abstract. Unfocused. Perhaps a man who could not help but see the entire universe could only be tenuously linked to the here and now. N’Jadaka growled. He bit down, and smirking as he felt Heimdall jerk beneath him. “Close your eyes, star-walker,” N’Jadaka whispered, and Heimdall trembled, his stroking fingers finally turning rougher over N’Jadaka’s back. 

N’Jadaka stripped them both down. When Heimdall’s fingers went to the clasps on his jacket, N’Jadaka pinned his wrists to the stone by his head, holding him down until Heimdall grew still, his eyes still closed. Could he see the stars even like this? N’Jadaka didn’t ask. He peeled off jackets and undershirts and belts, breeches, until he wore only his bracers and his father’s ring, while Heimdall wore nothing but Time. 

It was eternity that N’Jadaka scented, with his mouth buried over Heimdall’s throat, sealed over a pulse that had beat for longer than Wakanda had counted time. It was eternity he tasted as he kissed down under Heimdall’s arm, breathing deep. Heimdall had a neutral scent, warm and yielding as he was. The bite N’Jadaka worked over one dark nipple left no mark. He bit anyway, harder yet, down the flat sculpt of Heimdall’s belly, to his thickening cock, swelling among coarse curls. This looked human enough. Heimdall breathed out, a tiny sound, as N’Jadaka licked over the tip. A crack in his calm. 

Heimdall twitched and whispered something when N’Jadaka drank him down. He couldn’t fit all of it into his mouth, though he tried, breathing loudly, impatient, his fingertips digging against Heimdall’s thighs, leaving no bruises. Bobbing his head, careful of his teeth, N’Jadaka’s jaw ached, his eyes watering as the thick cap shoved against the back of his throat. Warm palms kneaded his shoulders, curling into his braided hair. Heimdall arched with a low sound, close to anguish. Then he was hauling N’Jadaka up roughly, kissing him before N’Jadaka could snap at him, rolling them over. He took another kiss, slower, deep, and here was hunger and lust and mortal impatience, scraped finally against N’Jadaka’s teeth. 

Heimdall’s golden eyes burned, so close. An ukhozi spirit, stooping for the kill. He kissed N’Jadaka again, gasping as N’Jadaka scoured his fingertips down the tight muscle of Heimdall’s back. Then he was shifting down, with a grunt, taking N’Jadaka into his mouth. More, and more, every inch until his lips were sealed over the root, and N’Jadaka was keening, shocked, his heels grinding against Heimdall’s spine. Heimdall’s throat worked as he drank, shoving at N’Jadaka’s ass until N’Jadaka rocked against him, his hands clenched in Heimdall’s dreads. This was profane, to do this to a star-walker, and yet. This was how men had worshipped their gods, when the world was young. With blood and teeth and flesh. Heimdall rumbled, as though he agreed, and growled as N’Jadaka tried to grind deeper. When N’Jadaka came, Heimdall swallowed it down, his own hand thrust between his thighs. 

“I’m going to leave Wakanda,” N’Jadaka said after, as they lay together, the sun setting out of sight and leaving the stars. “I want to walk in the world that is. Instead of the world that should be. I want to know suffering.” And with Heimdall there, perhaps he wouldn’t forget where he came from. Where he should be.

Heimdall said nothing. His eyes were closed, his arm tucked around N’Jadaka’s waist. He did glance up when N’Jadaka added, “And I want you to come with me.” 

“All lands are one to me.” 

“Then you won’t mind coming along.” N’Jadaka poked Heimdall in the shoulder. Heimdall sniffed, closing his eyes again. It wasn’t a ‘no’. “You’ve spent too long looking at the stars. It’s made you blind to the dust in between.” 

Heimdall hummed, a low rumble that he pressed against N’Jadaka. “Show me.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent  
> \--  
> Refs:  
> Apparently the poem Þrymskviða describes Heimdall as hvítastr ása, the “whitest of the gods” lol, which makes Marvel’s casting, intentional or not, great. 
> 
> http://ew.com/article/2016/05/05/black-panther-language-wakanda-xhosa/

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Wandering God](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14029959) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)




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